


NEVER THE ONES YOU'D THINK

by rubyelf



Category: Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Halloween, M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyelf/pseuds/rubyelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a Halloween story exchange over on LiveJournal. Sean and Viggo are enjoying some time to themselves, but Viggo isn't very good at keeping track of what day it is, and Sean gets a very disturbing surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	NEVER THE ONES YOU'D THINK

Fading Autumn sunlight slanted through the windows of the big bedroom in Viggo’s Idaho house, casting shadows from the red and gold leaves outside. Sean yawned and stretched, kicking off a mess of tangled sheets and glancing toward the window. Evening already, he thought, shaking his head. It was easy to lose track of time on the few occasions he could escape to join Viggo in his wooded sanctuary; he was fairly certain there wasn’t a clock in the entire house and Viggo had even put black tape over the one on the microwave so he didn’t have to look at it.

He listened and could hear Viggo downstairs in the kitchen, making a tremendous amount of noise in what sounded like a three-year-old banging pots and pans together. He found a pair of shorts and a pair of Viggo’s slippers before venturing downstairs; the hardwood floors had a tendency to be unnecessarily cold in the mornings.

He found Viggo kneeling on the kitchen floor, hunting through one of the cabinets. Sean, unable to resist Viggo’s ass in the air and his obliviousness to Sean’s presence, padded carefully forward and, without warning, gave him a brisk kick.

Viggo yelped a protest as he tipped forward into the cabinet, jerking back and sending pots and pans clattering to the floor. He managed to roll over and sit up, glaring at Sean.

“What the fuck was that for?”

Sean shrugged. “You’d have done the same thing.”

Viggo relented. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“What are you up to, anyway?”

“I was going to try to make us something for dinner.”

“There’s nothing to cook, remember? We’re both leaving in the morning. You were going to go into town and pick us up something to eat.”

“Yeah…” Viggo said, sighing. “I don’t really feel much like going anywhere, anyway.”

Sean went to the refrigerator and opened the door. “There’s some leftovers from the other day. We can eat that.”

“And at least there’s beer,” Viggo said, glancing over Sean’s shoulder.

Sean grinned and reached behind him, his hand unerringly finding Viggo’s crotch and feeling the heat through the thin fabric of his shorts. Viggo squirmed and laughed.

“What are you groping for?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m groping for,” Sean said, letting his fingers stroke along the rapidly hardening length.

“Didn’t think you’d be up for another round of that quite yet,” Viggo chuckled, pulling Sean away from the refrigerator and turning him around to kiss him.

Sean shook his head. He wouldn’t have thought so either, but it was always like this with Viggo; the times they could be alone together were never enough and his cock seemed to be just as aware of this as his brain, demanding that he make the most of every available opportunity.

Viggo reached down and slid his fingers under the waistband of Sean’s shorts.

“Hey! Your hands are freezing!”

“Whiner,” Viggo accused, silencing the anticipated retort with an extremely thorough kiss that pressed Sean back against the counter.

“Fuck! That’s cold too!”

Viggo rolled his eyes. “You’d think you grew up in the tropics instead of Sheffield, the way you bitch and moan about the cold.”

“I’m not a young lad anymore, you know.”

“That’s no excuse for being a sissy.”

Sean raised an eyebrow. “Sissy?”

Viggo grinned, and Sean knew from the bright, almost defiant flash in his eyes that dinner wasn’t going to be any time soon.

“You know you won’t get away with that,” he said.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Viggo challenged, and bolted.

Sean took his time, padding across the kitchen and back up the stairs. If he took long enough, Viggo would get bored of the game and come find him.

 

 

He eventually found Viggo off in the guest bedroom, hiding behind the door, but by that point Sean had already retrieved a handful of neckties from the top drawer in Viggo’s room and had been listening for the tell-tale creaks of the wooden floor revealing Viggo’s slightest movement.

“What are you doing, you lunatic?” he asked, stepping out into the hall. “I thought we were a bit too old for hide and seek, Vig.”

“You drastically underestimate my capacity for childish behavior,” Viggo said, making a run for the stairs but not in the least surprised when Sean caught him around the waist, dragged him back into the bedroom, and tossed him onto the bed.

“There. Now, stay there and stop being an idiot,” Sean said, hands on his hips.

Viggo grinned up at him. “You caught me. I surrender.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve surrendered before and then taken off running, so I intend to make sure this one’s for real,” Sean said.

Viggo watched with amusement as Sean used a tie to secure each of his arms to one of the bedposts.

“Those are good ties, you know.”

“Like you ever wear ‘em if you can help it,” Sean said, tightening a knot. “There… no more running around like a three-year-old on a sugar rush for you.”

Viggo attempted, and failed, to look disappointed. Sean ignored him and occupied himself with removing their shorts and slippers, musing that this was often as well-dressed as they got on the rare occasions they could be here together. Viggo squirmed and made a small, impatient noise as Sean ran his hands down his chest and over his thighs, very deliberately avoiding the places that were most obviously in need of attention. Sean chuckled, but resumed his slow, lazy caresses. They’d had the last few days to get the stay-in-bed-and-fuck-each-other-sore part out of their systems. This was their last evening together, and they’d burned off enough of the urgency already.

“Could do this to you all night,” Sean murmured. “Could make it take hours.”

Viggo rolled his eyes. “You’re likely to fall asleep before that.”

Sean shrugged. “Possible. Probably shouldn’t keep us up till all hours, anyway. We’ve both got flights to catch tomorrow and you know what airports are like on a Friday.”

Viggo frowned. “Tomorrow’s Thursday.”

“No wonder you’re always either early or late for everything. Tomorrow’s Friday.”

Viggo shifted uneasily. “That can’t be right. That would make today Thursday.”

“Today _is_ Thursday, you daft bastard. Been getting text messages all day making sure I’ll be back in town by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Today can’t be Thursday,” Viggo muttered, glancing nervously at the window. “Don’t fuck with me, Sean.”

“I’m not fucking with you! It’s Thursday night. What’s wrong with you?”

Viggo tugged at the ties. “Untie me. Come on, Sean… right now!”

Puzzled by the urgency and alarm in Viggo’s tone, Sean began to work at the knots, but he hadn’t really tied them thinking he’d have to undo them in a hurry, and Viggo’s fidgeting wasn’t helping.

“Stop pulling!” Sean demanded.

The sound that rumbled in Viggo’s chest was low and strange and made Sean jerk back and stare down at him in bewilderment.

“Sean… damnit!” Viggo exclaimed, and Sean felt his body tense and shudder beneath him. A moment later, before he had any idea what was happening, he had been violently tossed from the bed and found himself on the floor against the wall, dazed and stunned. The legs of the bed screeched on the wooden floor as it rocked wildly. Sean shook himself and stumbled to his feet just in time to duck as one of the bedposts was ripped loose from the bed and flung across the room, followed by the other one. The figure in the bed, twisting and writhing, was tearing at the sheets with long claws, and the skin was darkening as he watched with a rapidly sprouting coat of dark fur.

“Go away!” a voice that still had something of Viggo in it demanded, almost pleading.

Sean could not obey; he was frozen, staring. The creature’s face contorted, stretching into a canine muzzle, and its eyes flashed golden and wild as it shuddered and struggled to get to its feet, staggering unsteadily on four still-transforming legs.

Now Sean found himself backing toward the door; the thing looked vaguely like a wolf, but it was far larger than any he’d ever heard of; the entire bed groaned under its immense weight as it arched its back and a ridge of black, bristling fur sprouted along the length of its spine.

A strangled sound came from it, another plea for Sean to go, but it was drowned in a low growl that seemed to vibrate the air in the room as the creature shook itself and leaped from the bed to the floor, stalking toward Sean, yellow eyes alight.

Sean ran. He could her the creature behind him and his mind debated between the stairs and the other bedroom, but he knew if the thing caught him from behind on the stairs it would be the end of it, so he wheeled to the right and ducked into the guest bedroom, slamming the door behind him. He heard the creature hit the door with a massive thud that shook the wooden frame, but the door held. Sean leaned against it, hearing the hot, panting breath of the thing just beyond the door. He closed his eyes and hoped that there was enough of Viggo in it to turn it away, or that it would lose interest in prey it couldn’t see.

Either way, after a long moment, he heard the click of claws on the wooden floor, heading away down the hall. There were several thumps as it cleared the stairs in a few large bounds, and then a shattering crash that could only be the glass patio door breaking as the creature slammed through it. Sean closed his eyes, imagining the strange form loping off into the darkness and listening to the sudden silence around him.

Get in the car and drive, Sean, his brain demanded. Get the fuck out of here, drink this out of your head in a hotel bar and get on the plane in the morning, and this never happened.

He stepped to the window and looked up. Sure enough, a full moon hung low and bright over the trees.

Get the fuck out of here, Sean. Get good and drunk and wake up laughing at what a stupid nightmare this was.

But his feet would not move.

 

 

He measured the time till dawn in cups of coffee, pots of it brewed in the small coffee maker in the kitchen, sitting at the table and looking and the wooden floors and recalled that, years ago when Viggo had first brought him here, he’d commended on the gouges in the wood, and Viggo had shrugged it off, telling him the previous owners were fond of large dogs. Recalled the times on set many years ago in New Zealand when Viggo, suddenly claiming a crippling migraine, would disappear from the set and from everywhere he might normally be, arriving the next day looking a bit worse for wear, but ready to start filming. Recalled the way that even when Sean could have stayed longer, Viggo always had a reason why one or both of them had to be gone by a certain day… a photo shoot, or a press conference, or a business meeting, or the house was being sprayed for termites…

The coffee and the slowly passing hours had his hands starting to shake by the time the sun started to trace its long-awaited line of red-orange along the horizon beyond the trees. The night air through the gaping opening where the patio door had been was damp and cold, so he’d found a blanket to wrap around his shoulders and slippers to keep any bits of glass out of his feet.

The air outside was so still that even a rustling of leaves sounded clear and sharp over the silent yard. Sean’s head snapped up, expecting to see one of the numerous deer that had startled him all night with false alarms, but the pale figure stumbling across the cold grass was on two bare feet. Sean staggered to his feet, his body numb after sitting for so long, and hurried out over the broken glass, pulling the blanket from his shoulders.

Viggo, who seemed intent on putting one foot in front of the other, looked up with an expression of blank confusion as Sean came toward him. His skin bore long, skittering scrapes from tree branches and thorns, and his eyes were hollow and exhausted. He stopped and watched Sean walking toward him, seeming too weary to do anything else.

“Viggo?” Sean asked.

Then he realized that Viggo was shivering in the cold air, and without hesitation he covered the few steps between them and wrapped the blanket around him and pulled him against his chest.

“You’re half-frozen. Let’s get you in the house and in a hot shower.”

Viggo cocked his head and looked at him. “Why are you here?”

“Couldn’t leave.”

“Why not?”

“Couldn’t leave… like that.”

“Like what?” Viggo asked, puzzled, as Sean steered him toward the house.

“Running away from you,” Sean said.

“I could’ve killed you, you know.”

Sean shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Come inside before you freeze.”

“Sean…”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t bite you, did I?”

Sean grinned and shook his head. “Last night? No. You’ve bitten me plenty of times before, but not last night.”

Viggo relaxed slightly. “All right, then.”

Sean managed to awkwardly swing him over the worst of the broken glass and set him down at the kitchen table, shoving a mug of coffee into his trembling hands.

“Now I’ll have to get the bloody door fixed,” Viggo muttered. “Usually, when I know this is coming, I leave the doors open so I don’t break them.”

“You could’ve broken the bedroom door and gotten to me if you’d wanted to,” Sean said, sitting down with his own coffee.

“I don’t remember,” Viggo said. “I don’t remember anything after…”

His voice was so unsteady and shaken that Sean had to reach out and grasp his hand.

“Does anyone else know about this?”

“No.”

“Good,” Sean said.

Viggo glanced at him. “Why do you say that?”

Sean tried to hide a grin. “Because with all the alimony I’m paying, I’m telling you right now the last thing you need is a bunch of your neighbors showing up demanding you pay child support for all those puppies…”

Viggo’s eyes widened, but after a moment he lowered his head to the table and laughed.

“That’s not funny, you sick bastard.”

“It is, and you know it,” Sean said.

After a moment of chuckling, Viggo raised his head. “You want to know who bit me, right? Who made this happen?”

“Well, I was going to ask, yeah.”

“Well… you ever watched the extended cuts of the DVD’s of the “Rings” movies? The part with all the cast commentary?”

“Yeah… parts of it. Tried to avoid it. Bit embarrassing.”

“Well, you remember the part where they’re talking about shooting the little hobbit wedding scene?”

“The part where you went and hauled Billy in so you two could be an audience for them, and then you laid a big ol’ kiss on him? Yeah, what the fuck was that about?”

Viggo shrugged. “Just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

“What does that have to do with…”

“Remember what Dominic says afterwards, in the commentary, when someone’s telling him about it?”

“He says something about Billy having kissed most of the Fellowship, I think… or something like that.”

“Yeah.”

Sean frowned. “Wait a minute. You mean little Billy Boyd…”

“It’s never the ones you’d think, is it?” Viggo said wryly. “Just make sure I never bite you, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because our arguments get ugly enough when we’re both human.”

“True enough.”

“Although I don’t think you with a hangover counts as fully human,” Viggo pointed out.

Sean shook his head and squeezed Viggo’s hand. “I need a few stiff drinks after last night. How about if we both cancel our flights and tell everybody we’re sick, and we’ll take a few days to recover?”

“Sounds good to me,” Viggo said, his hand tightening around Sean’s.

 

 


End file.
